


Bug-Eyed Monsters

by ThePunkRanger



Series: 2020 Prompt Challenge [1]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Bees, Gen, Might Get Expanded On, One Shot, not sure yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26271967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePunkRanger/pseuds/ThePunkRanger
Summary: Sherlock wants to go looking for aliens.
Series: 2020 Prompt Challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908769
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Bug-Eyed Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Visitor

Sherlock is watching a bee.

Joan straightens from where she’s been crouching, trying to get her bearings on the map that he’s scribbled over liberally with a green pen.

“If you’re going to drag us out here to look for evidence of a UFO, you could at least keep your eye on the prize,” she complains, coming to stand over her partner.

Sherlock just shushes her with a hand, then goes back to studying the fuzzy insect as it crawls over the sparse desert flowers.

Giving in, she indulges him for a moment, watching silently as he offers his fingers to the little bee, letting it climb onto him without the slightest hint of fear.

“People often compare insects to aliens,” Sherlock says, turning his hand slowly to keep the bee on even ground, “Ridiculous, of course.The common honey bee is no more extraterrestrial than you or I.Even so, many of our visions of aliens tend to stem from insect characteristics: the large heads, many limbs, compound eyes...” he raises the bee so that it’s at eye-level with him, “To the point where one of our most common abbreviations for them is B.E.M., Bug-Eyed Monsters.”

Joan rubs the sweat from her forehead, wishing, not for the first time, that Sherlock could just be normal for five minutes.“That’s fascinating, really, but it’s nearly a hundred degrees out here, and unless you want sunstroke we should concentrate on finding whatever it is you’re looking for before noon.”

Sherlock replaces the bee gently on it’s flower, then pops to his feet, dusting off his knees.“Very well, let us resume our searching.”

She follows him back to the center of the hollow in the earth, where decades, at least, of overgrown scrub brush catch around their ankles and leave long, red scratches over her exposed shins.

_Aliens_ shouldn’t be a subject that a man like Sherlock Holmes would be interested in, and yet, two nights ago she had been woken from a dead sleep by Sherlock tossing a file folder onto her bed and telling her to get dressed for air travel.

The file had contained several printed articles and newspaper clippings pertaining to the Nevada desert, Area 51, and what some specific internet obsessives believed was a potential crash sight from long before the general public was looking for such things. 

Which was where they were now standing.

“Watson!Come help me with this rock.”

He’s pulling at a boulder, maybe three feet tall, embedded in the ground.When she gets to his side several bees are buzzing around his head, clearly annoyed at having some heavy-footed human trampling over their foliage.

“Come on.You push, I pull,” he instructs, setting his hands on the upper part of the boulder.

She doesn’t protest, having learned early on that somehow Sherlock always seems to have some form of method to his madness, if given the time to show it.Bracing her hiking boots in the loose gravel, she places both palms on the side of the rock, and begins to push.

The rock shifts, just the tiniest bit, and Sherlock quirks an eyebrow at her, his lips turned up in excitement.

It’s been in the same place for years, and they end up having to employ the pair of folding trowels Sherlock has brought along to pry it out of the earth, sending it tumbling away with a great shower of dirt that covers the both of them.

When the dust clears enough to see, she finds the boulder laying several feet away, the bees crowding around it.She’s about to ask Sherlock and his superior bee knowledge just what that’s all about, when she finds him with his head stuck inside the hole the boulder has just vacated.

“What-“ she begins, only to cut herself off when he pulls back out of it, gesturing for her to see for herself.

Blue, phosphorescent goo drips down from the top of the hole, which she notes is far too big to just be the indentation of the rock, filling it with a soft glow.

“Joan Watson, meet alien slime,” Sherlock says with a grin.


End file.
